How to Write Plagiarism-Free Essays

Plagiarism is a menace in the world of academic writing and scholastics. It can ruin your career and hard earned credits entirely. Once detected, plagiarism may be a cause of losing a student’s credibility in the eyes of the examiner and the institution. That is why, plagiarism should be avoided.

What is plagiarism all about?

Plagiarism can be defined as an act of academic negligence or fraud that has got ethical as well as legal repercussions. There are various kinds of plagiarism. If a student turns in somebody else’s work as his or her own, it is the most obvious case of plagiarism. Sometimes, a student may copy passages, words, or ideas from somebody else’s work. If this is done after giving appropriate credits to the author of reference, then it is okay. But if copying is done without giving credits to the original author, it is another direct case of plagiarism.

Issues with quoting text or paraphrasing

If a student directly copies work authored by somebody else word by word, he or she should put quotation marks for showing the quoted text distinctly. Plagiarism occurs if this act of putting quotation marks is not carried out carefully enough. For instance, sometimes quotation marks may be put at the beginning of a passage or sentence copied, but closing quotation marks at the end of that passage or sentence is completely omitted or missed out.

Furthermore, when strict rules are applied, plagiarism may be detected even after paraphrasing. If the syntax and sentence structure remains identical even after changing the words of a referenced or copied passage, then plagiarism may be detected by the examiner.

Ways of avoiding plagiarism

If a student quotes texts directly instead of copying and pasting them, then plagiarism can be avoided with the help of correct and specific referencing. But it is not always a wise decision to quote the passages and sentences whenever one needs to use somebody else’s idea. In that case, instead of using direct quotes, the student should try to paraphrase.

It means that the student must read the original author’s work, mentally assimilate the original author’s ideas or viewpoints, and then write down those ideas or viewpoints using his or her own words. However, while paraphrasing, the student must not forget to reference the work of the original author appropriately.

Plagiarism check

There are various methods of checking for plagiarism. One of the best methods is to use some plagiarism checking software applications. These applications must be used online. There are certain websites like Viper and Copyscape that provide Web-based plagiarism checking services. Once a student submits his or her paper to them, they not only detect the duplicated portions but also show that which exact textual materials have been copied by intention or accident. After that, the student can avoid the issues with copied text and submit a plagiarism free paper.